Talk:San Francisco Metropolitan Area
Sector Confusion Capricorn wrote to me, Hey, concerning your changing the Earth sectors the San Francisco Metropolitan Area‎, I happen to disagree with those changes. But then again, the graphic we're basing this on is infamously confusing, so I thought that rather then do something dramatic I'd just ask you about it here first. In my view, the mention of the SFMA is in a sub-header of a Sector 2 news report, so to me that seams like it clearly implies that the SFMA is either part of, or just is sector 2. On the other hand, I'm guessing you've got the Sectors 45 to 49 from the large SF area map to the right of the weather report, and I can't see how that information could possibly be wed to the sector 2 mention, but apparently it must be, and given a clear implication of which sector it is in, and a bit of information somewhere else that is seemingly contradictory (but probably still makes sense in some way in-universe), I think we should clearly go for the former. (that is of course, unless you've found a second instance of Metropolitan area label, on the map or something. But I've looked, and if its there I don't see it) -- Capricorn (talk) 11:13, October 2, 2013 (UTC) :Personally, I don't know, with the confusion that these displays are causing, how a person in that universe could read them with confidence. The purpose of an interface is that anyone can understand them. This seems, to me, to be that elusive quality that Jorge Almeida and others miss when designing these interfaces. Earlier this year, there was an article on how bad these type of interfaces were. http://www.theawl.com/2013/02/how-minority-report-trapped-us-in-a-world-of-bad-interfaces Anyhow, * Sector 2 is the San Fransico Metropolitan Area. (I don't know what is being represented in that report; my familiarity with weather reports is that they include a map of the area and, if there are maps in that report, they don't represent anything that is in the SFMA.) Capricorn explained well why someone would think that. * Sectors 45 to 49 is San Francisco. This map attached to this heading is not that of the city, but of a section of the SFMA from Richmond (EB)/Tiburon & Sausalito (WB) south to Oakland & Alameda (EB)/San Francisco (WB). So, for me, I believe that these are the sectors, and not Sector 2, that SFMA resides in. * Yet, if Sector 2 is the SFMA, than that raises the thought that Sectors 45 to 49 reside in that sector and may represent the city itself solely. However, if that is the case, then the terminology is wrong, according to the canon. In "Conspiracy", we were introduced to subsectors, which were sectors within sectors. Yet, interesting enough, the map for the SFMA has this heading, Earth: Sectors 45 to 49/CB 9/illegible words (2) are representative of military installaton movements since star. So, were sectors on Earth called Earth Sectors or just Sectors? And why is the sentence truncated, so that we don't know what the stardate is? :It's all terribly confusing, and I don't know what further to say.Throwback (talk) 16:55, October 2, 2013 (UTC) And to think I actually liked minority report :-D - But that aside, this is hardly a new problem: Ever since Ballance of Terror, we've seen all kinds of space maps, and it's not like all those different designers were working to make sure they adhered to some kind of master map of known space, they were just making up stuff as they went along. Result : after 40+ years there is no way you could now come up with a model of space which is consistent with every fact we know. But we still have to abstractly assume that in-universe, this somehow makes sense, even if we can't see a way it logically could. But it's not a reason to despair, I think: the antidote is to make as few assumptions as possible and try to focus as much as possible on what is actually before our eyes, rather then what we think we can deduce from it. Too much deduction in an universe that isn't designed to be consistent is the same as speculation, because two different logic and valid lines of reasoning might still lead to different outcomes, and which particular outcome we must logically say to be true depends on which path we've taken to arrive at that conclusion. Combining different maps to get information is never going to get us anywhere, since the maps weren't designed to be combinable. In this particular case, the two contradictory bits of information are actually on the same graphic, which is unusual, but I think that same principle can still be applied. A weather report on sector 2 talking about the SFMA seems to me to imply that the SFMA is in sector 2. On the other hand we also know that a part of what we recognise as the bay area is labeled as sectors 45-49. We still have to assume that in-universe there's an explanation, and I can think of a few possibilities, albeit far-fetched ones, but that's not our job, or at least not on this site. I think we just ought to stick to the facts (SFMA is in sector 2 - and parts of SF lie in sectors 45-49), and leave the interpretation for other people. A background note saying that this doesn't seem to much sense might be in order, but that's about as far as we should go in interpreting. -- Capricorn (talk) 11:52, October 3, 2013 (UTC) I've gone ahead and tried to make certain changes based on the points of this discussion. But since you haven't answered to my last post I'm not entirely certain where we landed. So if you have further issue, please say so. (In case you're confused exactly what I've changed, I've also put your city list in a bg note in a bg note in an unrelated edit before) -- Capricorn (talk) 14:55, October 5, 2013 (UTC)